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Huey Lewis And The News, and then a Pop Music Daffynition

It just dawned on me, I am the fake media. Just look at my diatribe against fruit disguised as 5 things you don’t know about fruit. Now, if we could somehow get the White House to admit to their involvement and creation of fake news or alternate facts, we can proceed in putting the “United” back in the United States of America. This is why it won’t happen.

Our president is basically Bart Simpson, neither have a sense of humor. We rarely laugh with Bart; we laugh at him. Simpson’s not really funny, yet thinks he’s very funny, and in turn, ends up being a mean ass. He is nothing more than a thin-skinned bully with an abstract hairstyle.

And now, some fake news about Huey Lewis And The News.

Pop music is a fickle mistress. Ask Huey Lewis, and he’ll say, “It’s the power of love,” accompanied with his fist in the air, just above the shoulder, and a solid pump bump or knock bump, okay, fist bump, as succinct as a healthy heartbeat.

Huey Lewis, born Hugh Anthony Cregg III in 1950, is about to celebrate a birthday on July 5. Way to not take the heroin highway, good on you. In the 1970s, Lewis joined the band Clover, a pub-rock band. He played the role of lead harmonicist.

CRED FACTOR: Clover was the backing band on Elvis Costello’s “My Aim Is True” in 1977.

1982: Huey Lewis And The News release “Picture This” with the mild hit “Do You Believe In Love” and the lesser hit, “Workin’ For A Livin’”.

1983: “Sports” is released, spawning four hit singles and selling over ten million units. MTV plays a large part in making this album so huge.

Side story: In the summer of 1983, months before “Sports” became a hit, I worked at a “record store” in Chicago. On this particular day, the Columbia Records representatives came in all hurried and annoying to make a large display to put up on the wall above the back room. This whole affair became very suspicious, when a flurry of 7 higher up reps came in and marched straight into the back room and up into the office, which overlooked the store. They were laughing and smoking it up with the boss, while the lesser reps stapled up record flats on a large Styrofoam poster sheet as fast as they could. The clods somehow assembled a ladder and put the poster up on the wall without falling down, like they had the time before, and if on cue, the office door opened, and lots of smoke seeped out, followed by Huey Lewis leading the pack of CBS execs. There was a lot of fake laughing and probably backslapping. I’m looking at this Johann, and wondering why this pompous jerk-ass caused all this ballyhoo, and damn it, why did he look so familiar. Then he posed underneath the poster, while reps snapped Polaroids, followed by that whir as the photo churned out of the camera. Huey re-enacted the jacket over the shoulder pose. I remember thinking, I never want to be that guy, he’s never going to make it because he’s trying too hard. Sad truth, I was wrong on both accounts.

1985: A little movie called Back To The Future opens, featuring the song, “The Power Of Love”. Number one, ka-ching.

1986: “The Power Of Love” is nominated for Best Original Song Academy Award and loses to “Say You, Say Me” by Lionel Richie.

The album “Fore!” is released, spawning two hits.

1987-1991: Huey Lewis And The News enjoy a career of obscurity, not experiencing any form of radio play.

1992: Walt Disney Studio releases the movie musical Newsies, a convoluted tale based on the New York City Newsboys Strike of 1899. It is a box office flop starring a young Christian Bale. Thanks to home video, it made enough money to become one of those musicals that began as a movie.

1993-1999: Another age of Huey Lewis And The News doing a whole lot of nothing.

2000: Huey Lewis launches an acting career in the movie Duets, with the tagline: Six lost souls in search of a little harmony (more like a little paycheck), sings a duet with Gwyneth Paltrow, covering the Smokey Robinson song, “Cruisin’”. The song reaches number one on the US adult contemporary charts.

2001-2017: Huey Lewis enjoys an anniversary of the release of “Sports” and tours the state fairs across America.

Huey Lewis And The Newsies

/(h)yoo/wē/ /loo/wəs/ /and/ /thə/ /n(y)oo/zēz/

noun

a term from the 1990s, where an artist reaches a critical point of their career, most often the nadir, whence the most ludicrous proposition is a serious possibility

synonyms: jumping the shark, losing your audience from sucking out loud then trying to find a reality show to put your spouse on, Joey Lawrence

“The Justin Timberlake & Palmer project is a reprehensible Huey Lewis And The Newsies move; I had no idea that Carl Palmer was running out of career options.”

“My favorite Huey Lewis And The Newsies was from the noughties or double ohs: Queen + Paul Rodgers, which one is Huey Lewis and which one is The Newsies?”